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mlewisredford

~ may the Supreme and Precious Jewel Bodhichitta take birth where it has not yet done so …

mlewisredford

Tag Archives: teaching art

the Telescope

16 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in teaching

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

assessment for learning, evaluation, integration, knowledge, learning, learning objective, lesson planning, questioning, teaching, teaching art, teaching craft, telescope, understanding, unpacking

Unpacking the Telescope

Having ‘sighted’ the Learning Objective, here is where the true magic begins.   The teacher – with all h/er degree course, holistic understanding of the Learning Objective – needs to ‘unpack’ it.   The whole Learning Objective (the topic) needs to be broken down so that the pupil can begin to access it.   A skilled teacher does not wade straight in with the issues and analysis of a topic, s/he will plan the lesson which starts with identifying the topic (knowledge), then showing how it works (understanding) and finally, if a pupil can get that far, nurture analysis or discussion of it (evaluation).   The lesson is the topic unpacked (which takes a high level of discerning analysis on behalf of the teacher, we do need to know our subjects at degree-level).   Teaching is the alchemy of taking the pupils’ minds through the lesson, of making them see, guiding them, allowing them, clueing them in, clueing them through, pointing them to the Bigger Picture of the Learning Objective.   This requires the art of communication – the tricks, foolery, adjustment and dancing which can never be captured in a tick-box sheet of paper.   This is where the power of the teacher lies, not just in producing the lesson (a marvel in itself if well unpacked – and mapped), but in taking the pupil through the lesson (the creative, unmethodical dynamic which is communication).   The ‘telescope’ needs to be opened out in order to see through it.

Looking Through the Telescope

The pupil’s learning – the response to the lesson – is one of finding and then integrating.   Finding straight facts is one level of learning, categorising them is a higher level, linking them together is a higher level, relating them is yet higher, testing them is yet higher still, analysing them still higher, contextualising them from a macro perspective…   Each successive level of learning requires the fitting of what has been already learnt into a wider perspective – integration.   The lazy pupil will be satisfied with the straight facts (the disaffected pupil won’t even get this far); the enquiry of a pupil (or the skill of a teacher) will seek to see how far their knowledge can be taken.   If the way to integrate the knowledge is clear (again the skill of the teacher) learning will develop (not just be ‘received’).   The telescope will be folded back once the view has been seen: knowledge fits into understanding fits into evaluation.

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

evaluation wormhole: tag cloud poem VI – anyone’s eyes
knowledge teaching craft & understanding wormhole: the View: from Here to the Learning Objective to the Learning Horizon
teaching art wormhole: The Future of Teaching: performance or capability (‘oh, not ‘teaching’ then?’)

 

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The Future of Teaching: performance or capability (‘oh, not ‘teaching’ then?’)

09 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in teaching

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Academy status, capability, career, compromise, consultation, government, money, obligation, performance, performance management, politics, professional development, professionalism, recognition, slogans, teaching art, teaching craft

Preface: the UK government is driving all sorts of misery right through the art of living in the name of preparing national life for the future and responding to The Economic Situation That We All Find Ourselves In!!!   Nowhere more so than in public service, and most keenly felt by myself in Education, where the reform seems to be aimed at disenfranchising the professional teacher from the very exercise of their own skill: teaching.   Schools are being put in a position whereby they have become reliant on providing an education service which can only run on various extra fundings (erstwhile specialisms); the fundings have now disappeared – ‘wail, what can we do?’ – and ‘never fear, we offer you … Academies’.   With what seems a lot of money – we were made an offer we couldn’t refuse.   However, legally, these Academies have now haemorrhaged from local authority control – big saving of money.   Management of Academies has devolved to the Academies themselves.   “Freedom,” bannered our school when it became an Academy at the beginning of this year (‘aha,’ I thought ‘this could be creative’) “… to all think along the same lines” (‘wail’).   Towards the end of this year the government has made proposals that Performance Management (through which a teacher is targeted and measured how well they do their job) and Capability Procedures (through which a teacher goes if their work is perceived as inadequate) should be grafted together into one procedure.   Our Review would henceforth start with the check to see if we are still capable, and that if there is the slightest question over any aspect of our performance our review would suddenly become a struggle for our jobs.   Our Academy would like to take this up.   We have a period of consultation.   The following is what I offered to the discussion:

Of course the government document highlights and emphasises that grafting performance management and capability is the way forward in management of teachers.   The ‘way’ ‘forward’ is to streamline the teaching workforce into a unified cadre of Education Deliverers and the only way to do this is to nullify teacher thought and experience – the very vocation that has moved a person to turn their life to teaching in the first place – to sterilise it by declaring it an obstacle to progress, to make it un-relevant.   But this does not fore-decide that we should do likewise.   We are an Academy now.   This means we have the freedom … (oh, ‘to all think along the same lines’, damn, I thought I had a good point there – even the opportunity to pursue a dialogue is now denied me).   In pursuing this ‘reform’ the school is demonstrating its willingness and determination to weed out those who are not ‘like-minded’ (as narrowly and ineffectively defined by the school), quite independent from whether they are good and effective teachers or not.   How ironic, now, that this would be performed under the aegis of what was formally known as ‘professional development’.   This move would simply make it easier to define individual teachers out of their jobs – it would complete the bypassing of the organic, sharing, collegiate creativity that is the craft and art of teaching.

‘FREEDOM … to all think along the same lines’ isn’t this the most oxy-moronic slogan to have been heard?

More and more, a career in teaching feels like life in a cult: the over-riding and rendering-irrelevant of the very basis and reference that formed an individual’s teaching identity in the first place.   If my thought and creativity do not comply with the ‘acceptable’ practice of the organisation I am immediately rendered anathema by the organisation which holds tight to the only means of endorsement of my work and identity: performance management.   My thought and creativity will be banished, excluded, rendered untouchable, polluted, much like the ultimate punishment of early societies – to be banished was to lose your very identity, it would have been far better to have just been killed.

This is not what I came into teaching for and yet I am obliged to have to respond to it.   I am obliged to have to conform in it.   And the proposed streamlining of capability and performance will complete the alienation from my own endeavour in teaching that has been making me ill, now, for the past decade.   How on earth can I be expected to believe that this is in the ‘best interests’ of teachers, let alone pupils or their parents?   When the proposal goes ahead – as it inexorably will – will my objections in this consultation render me ‘incapable’ unless I change them?   And will I then be ‘performance managed’ out of my career?

I will say it now, and I will say it here, (even though it will not have immediate sway over what is happening anyway, but being one in a million who marched on the streets of London in 2003 saying ‘NO’ to Tony Blair obliged him to become so ridiculous in his determination to go to war that it rendered him a liability, I can hope): government-nurtured management of education/schools/teachers is just plain, simple wrong.   This current proposal is the epitome of wrong management, of either people or public service.   It is demotivating.   It is mechanised only to identify the lack (or even just the ‘satisfactory’), it absorbs the good and immediately takes it for granted, rather than seeing how it works and cultivating it.   Teachers work hard now to cover their backs and stay out of hassle rather than culture their practice.   Lazy management just demands over recognising or understanding or nurturing; it doesn’t bother working out how to meet (and therefore manage) the demands itself.   It narrowly pre-defines success criteria – extracting from the whole community that is communication – reducing education to a process rather than a growth.   It practises outcome-led management to the detriment of value-informed practice, and in this way exploits endeavour rather than nurturing it.   Management does not recognise teachers as a resource but as mechanisms (reductio’d ad absurdum) to those imposed outcomes in which they have no investment and in which they had no decision.   Management has become dictatorial and inconsistent and determinedly non-democratic or non-nurturing.   It may be the way the government wants management to be, but it is wrong.   Governments are often wrong.

Am I saying all this simply because of my own experience of being ignored rather than managed during the last decade?   Yes.   Are my words therefore rendered irrelevant because of this?   No.   Unless the way I have been treated was all a very long-running mistake.   And unless the litter of other teachers’ careers I have seen discarded by the roadside, crumpled and shaking, was wrong as well (I have seen teachers with decades of successful experience reduced to ‘satisfactory’ and then retired; I have seen teachers hounded to cure a hastily diagnosed symptom until they became ill and left the profession; I have seen passionate teachers walk out of their career with no forwarding post, during a recession; I have seen teachers shift out of their job to become successful elsewhere where they were listened to; I have seen teacher’s whole legacy rubbished once they were retired; I have seen teachers dis-abled in their career because they hadn’t been practising the sudden advent of a new initiative for years previously; I have seen teachers shifted into teaching wholly different subjects as a reward for evading being made redundant; I hear, every day, the attrition of spirit every time an e-mail is opened).   Wouldn’t it be better for my career if I just shut up and didn’t express my unhappiness and reservations about this ordeal which is my career?   For the decade past, it makes no difference; if this proposal goes ahead: yes.

If I don’t send this, it is because I need to look after my health.   If I do send it, it is because I believed the word ‘consultation’ and because I shouldn’t be thinking only of myself.

(I did send it – it presumably got consulted, although I have not talked to any manager about it.   We hear the results on Monday 16th July – the week we break for the summer holidays.)

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

career wormhole: Child of Illusion
compromise wormhole: really
money & performance & politics & teaching craft wormhole: teaching: which is it going to be, procedure or nurture?
obligation wormhole: the / pyrrhic / play
performance management wormhole: teaching performance
professionalism wormhole: responsible
recognition wormhole: across the room / through the patio doors / through the conservatory windows / at the bottom of the garden / the still bifurcated trunk of / the oak / before the let-grown hair and fringes / of the fir tree / blown every lifetime in a while by the winter sun // actually
teaching art: Resource

 

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Resource

06 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by m lewis redford in teaching

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

disempowerment, management, managerialism, resource, teaching art, teaching craft

It is unskilful to consider – and reject almost as one act – any piece of work and thought from a front line worker.   It is unskilful to appraise it as a whole, end-product.   It is unskilful to see it as insufficient simply because it has not arrived by strategy or management domain.   Its inevitable – inexorable – rejection (its dismissal, its en-irrelevance) will, equally inevitably, significantly damage the worker’s belief in the education system, it will damage their morale, it will damage their confidence.   Their belief, their morale, their confidence will become confused; there will be a despair of thinking that there was any ‘system’ or purpose in education altogether.   The system will be understood – experienced – to be systemically unable to incorporate the very thought, experience, expertise of the service it seeks to systematise.   It – the system – will demand and measure impertinent to the very service it regulates.   A school can only ‘see’ work as ‘ends’-defined (i.e. rather than ‘means’-defined), ‘solution’ rather than ‘process’, ‘result’ rather than ‘mechanism’ when viewed through a managerial model only.   This way of viewing makes things change within education, but not necessarily for the right reasons, because it centres the gravity of activity around the decision and not the resource itself.   To override the resource is a maniacal oversight and waste and produces work which lurches, which is often reluctant, and achieves no momentum.

Rather, any work offered should be seen as a forum/discussion/seminar/exploration, as a ‘let’s see’ rather than a ‘this is it’.   Any development needs to be holistic, recognising the inter-dependent origination of both management and the resource (both the yang and the yin) so that it can produce organic, stable, plan-able, fruitful, reliable work.   The manager strategises and integrates the resource, the resource innovates and practises.   Managers are rewarded for managing/strategising/integrating, resources should be rewarded for innovating/galvanising/catalysing – both of these above and beyond (and amid) the fundamental job of teaching.

A teacher ever was, and ever will be, a resource.   But controlling by over-ruling them, by disempowering their craft, by alkalising their endeavour will surely be a waste for the school as well as for them.   Use them and reward them as a resource, consult, explore, follow their discoveries and applications, then see how they can be managed across the school.   And what is the reward for being a resource?   Take them off a full timetable, it is an absolute killer for anyone that does anything more than just walk into a classroom and ‘DHL’ a lesson.

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

managerialism wormhole: compromised
resource wormhole: Apologia
teaching art wormhole: a bit painful this
teaching craft wormhole: the Hothousing of Teaching

 

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a bit painful this

18 Saturday May 2013

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

2011, 6*, acceptance, breakdown, communication, dancing, doing, growth, letting go, management, Mona Lisa, performance, play, pupils, responsibility, school, teaching art, teaching craft, work

 

 

 

                                                                      a bit painful this

                     I do hang on to this impasse with school
                     I have become this impasse with school
                     it pre-occupies me
                     and yes it is true that their angularity and down-heaval
                     have prolonged and un-necessaried me but – sighs –
                                   it didn’t happen
                                   and it won’t happen
                                   the way I think it should
                                   and could – shrugs – well then
                     let’s continue on let’s lighten up
                     let’s joke around with pupils
                                   enough to craft them to grow
                     let’s wing and pitch ideas to teachers
                                   without Responsibility

                     that is where my magic is
                                   not in leading
                     but in leaking
                     in infiltrating contaminating dyeing
                     in dancing and skipping (and sometimes even waltzing)

                     in playing at my work not head-aching it
                     in reading the road not Highway Coding it
                     in writing it not plotting it
                     in sitting with a reassuring Mona Lisa smile not grimming it
                     in playing at teaching not outstanding it

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

acceptance wormhole: p                        o                   i                             n                                                   t                            l                          e                                 s   s                                          n                                                         e                   s                                                                                                  s               all around
breakdown wormhole: nightmare
communication wormhole: two year / pre-cursor / flashing / on | off … // (… to 121212)
dancing wormhole: the sea plant
doing wormhole: brilliance
letting go wormhole: but there …
management & performance & teaching art wormhole: really?
play wormhole: waltz
school wormhole: wriving
teaching craft wormhole: Are You Being Served?
work wormhole: my life / of others

 

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really?

15 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2012, 6*, career, community college, CPD, management, performance, performance management, results-led education, teaching art

 

 

 

                           really?

                           was it really
                           so necessary
                           to take my offer
                           of thought and worth
                           and quicksnort-talk
                           about money instead

                           did we really
                           make progress
                           when evading
                           opportunities
                           to consider
                           every year
                           when we
                           managed my
                           performance

                           did we really
                           get the best
                           out of us all
                           when stifling
                           our voice
                           in the dialectic
                           but holding us
                           responsible
                           to the outcome

                           are we really
                           a community
                           college when
                           I am allowed and
                           even developed
                           to doubt the very
                           thought that I
                           practise as long
                           as I say I am fine
                           when asked

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

career & performance management wormholes: ‘if you want to rely on me …’
management & performance wormhole: the ghost with open wound
results-led education wormhole: through a cracked glass greenly
teaching art wormhole: Are You Being Served?

 

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Are You Being Served?

12 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2011, 5*, Big Picture, bureaucracy, business, career, CPD, G2O, managerialism, performance management, politics, power, statistics, teaching, teaching art, teaching craft

 

 

 

                                     Are You Being Served?

          Performance Management; CPD; A*-C passes; Budget Cuts; Good to
          Outstanding; Interventions; Big Pictures; Tough Decisions
                                                 going down

          culturing openings; tiered discovery; consultative mark-books; widening
          containment; practice-led nurture
                                                 Take the Stairs
                                                 First Floor Only
                                                 Important Decoration in Progress
                                                              Indefinitely

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

career wormhole: ‘fallen and injured …’

managerialism & performance management & teaching & teaching art & teaching craft wormhole: the ghost with open wound
politics wormhole: through a cracked glass greenly
power wormhole:

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the ghost with open wound

11 Sunday Nov 2012

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

2010, 2012, 8*, Allen Ginsberg, assessment for learning, career, CPD, criteria, Howl, learning, madness, management, managerialism, markbook, performance, performance management, professionalism, resource, society, targets, teaching, teaching art, teaching craft, UPS

edited and reposted from the ghost with / open wound, 6th January 2012

 

 

 

the ghost with open wound

I

                      I grieve for my stillborn children
                      the markbook the yinyang learning
                      delivered and left in the theatre
                ‘how beautiful those babies are!’ said the people in the gallery
                      but the surgeon had left the room
                talking urgently with his staff about something else
                      much more important

        I grieve for the upbringing I gave to them anyway
        all of my mother’s thought and striving
        all of the creativity I put into them
                lesson after lesson
        for only adventitious and unexpected gain
                like a mother from the wrong minority in the wrong neighbourhood
                raising her children to have pride and dignity
                to have their place in this fair and equal society

                                     not openly condemned
                                ‘for we are a righteous, civil profession’
                           but silence’d awkward-ed false-smile’d
                                ‘it-must-be-so-difficult’ed
                           ‘if-there-is-anything-I-can-do’ed
                                ‘how-are-your-children-getting-on’ed
                      while all the newspapers and televisions ask and debate
                                openly, transparently and so very fairly
                      what exactly these minorities contribute to our fine society
                           which aspires to be an Outstanding society
                      to stand proud in posterity …

II

                      … I am Rosa Parks
        tired of having to give way
                                even though I am sitting on the right seat
                in Montgomery I am Steve Biko still
chanting with my bloodied lip
                                     face down on the cell floor
                           in Port Elizabeth I am Solzhenitsyn blowing
        warmth onto my hands
                      far far across the Archipelago I am the
                Chilean mother with pictures
                      of my sons tied around my neck
        in Santiago I am a Vietnamese family
                                split up and adrift
                      on several boats in the South China seas I am a silent
        Thich Quang Duc sitting
                by the Austin Westminster I am an ex-monk
                           on a tour around the restored Jokhang in Lhasa
        China I am a
                                ‘best minds of my generation’
                succumbed to madness

                           and I howl silently
                      against the society that put me in this cell
                      but told me I am free
                           I am tired but push on
                                even pick up the pace a little although
                I forget: I am weak
                      no one cheers me on
                      others only notice
                           when I stumble

III

                twenty five years ago I was scurrying about
                      trying to pick up the pieces of a dream
                but the wind kept blowing them out of my reach
                      as I kept bumping into fences and walls
                ‘stop the wind!’ I complained in longer and longer documents
                      although no one would hear me
                      through the noise of the machines

        ten years ago I offered up a lightweight
                latticed bin with which to tidy up the yard
        ‘what is he carrying that bin around for
                while we are trying to push the leaves into one corner’
        they shouted to each other from their walls and towers
                ‘I wish he’d get out of the way?’
                      ‘but the bin’ I said
                           something whole integrative dialectical webbed adjustable

                clamour excitement
                      I could hear the crowd grow to a roar as I ascended the steps
                the torch held high I lit the beacon and …
                      … absolutely nothing.
        No beacon no crowd no stadium no roar
                the tumult had built and built and
whmmph! –
        not even an echo remained

IV

                           Where am I?
                           Was I in that stadium
                           did I run those steps
                           was I going to light
                           that whole stadium?

                           Surely I didn’t imagine it all!
                           Surely there were steps
                           the stadium the beacon
                           all those people.
                           Surely all those things
                           were there!   Why else
                           was I carrying the torch?

                The torch I kept.   I kept it burning.
                I burnt it more and more efficiently
                      – clean, pure, bright.
                I fashioned a lamp to keep it in.
                It sent out light beyond itself and
                I wandered around this bardo.

                                     But most of it is gloom:
                                     odd voices odd shadows
                                     strange noises and chants –

                           seepeedee                youpee-ess
        ay-yeffell                      arr-aygee                      geetoo-ohpe
                      errf-ormanst                      argits-cry
                                     tear-eearrrr

                      From time to time I could see
                      people calling me to account
                      I moved between them, I held up my lamp
                      but they couldn’t see me, couldn’t hear me.
                      And then they’d turn and talk to me
                      they’d look me in the eye and tell me
                           – so that I understood clearly
                           that this was urgent –
                      what society needed now
                      how deficiency was related
                           directly
                      to what I – face fixed
                           eye-contact name at the top
                           of the document   You!   Me?   Now!   Already?   Criteria!
                           But…?   Proe-fesh-shun-all –
                      did and what I did not do

                      and then they would Team me
                      three more heads turn and fix me
                      six heads – heartbeat self-conscious
                           ‘I’m noticed at last I’m here’ –
                      advance towards me
                           ‘I can act again’
                      bear down on me
                           ‘I know I’ll…’
                      and walk right through me –
                           whuphh, mphhwaphhwumpp, phblphbdphbdph…
                      … agghh!

                      held up the lamp
                           almost blew the wick out
                      quick turn it down turn away under my coat
                           shield it keep it alive
                           hide it

                      I am alone again
                           just the noises
                      keep it alive hide it
                           keepitalive hideit
                      keepitalive hideit

                           I – am – keeping – it – alive – !

                                space all
                                around
                                no echo
                                no denial
                                no light
                                madness

        I saw the ghostly stadium the neon beacon
                (‘bulb needs changing. A flame would be much better)
        people blurring past and through me
                I held up my lamp but it lighted up nothing
        people ran through it –
                almost put the flame out

                                          I died a living
                                          active yet muffled
                                          for ten years then
                                          twenty not sure
                                          how long and
                                          every so often
                                                                                              I go mad

V

                I have been in, but not part of, the stadium all this time.
                It is here, all about and above creaking and flapping
                      I had thought it didn’t exist at all.
                It is cardboard and canvas standing up
                against the inevitable winds and snow.

                So much construction, so little structure, so little warmth.
                It is cold here in this wasteland.

                I am still cold but I sit to one side now –
                      out of the way –
                and try to stuff my ears to the noises the voices.
                I still have a lamp.   I try to keep warm by it.

                I can’t see them – out in the night and cold –
                but are there other souls wandering lost
                      feeling their way?
                Is there anybody else out there?
                Please come and join me over here.
                If we sit together I can get quite a lot of heat
                from this lamp.   It is powered by …
                      fire.
                Let’s see – what wounds have you got?

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

(hidden) Allen Ginsberg & career & teaching wormhole: my life / of others
assessment for learning & markbook wormhole: ‘let everything go …’
learning & targets wormhole: aghh – we’ve been infected / it’s spreading through the system / we’re losing our files … / it’s taken out the processor … / I, I can’t open with this program anymore … / it’s scanning me – / I’ve got to buy a Virus Protection Program from it …
management & managerialism & performance & teaching art & teaching craft wormhole: through a cracked glass greenly
performance management wormhole: Failure
professionalism wormhole: Struck
resource wormhole: dry rot
society wormhole: lobby

 

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through a cracked glass greenly

30 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

2012, 7*, communication, disempowerment, glass, management, managerialism, performance, politics, results-led education, system, teaching art, teaching craft, value-led education

 

 

 

                           through a cracked glass greenly

                it’s bad enough
            I offer my thought and care
                and creation
                and you
            sweetly no edge completely
                side-blind me and
                expect of me
            to perform to your management
                which …
            … sorry Mark were you saying
                something?

                                          —o—

            there was nothing wrong with the tri-partite system
            nothing wrong with leaving before 16
            there was nothing wrong with selection
            there was nothing wrong with vocationalism
            nothing wrong with apprenticeships
            there was nothing wrong with the National Curriculum
            there was nothing wrong with O-levels
            nothing wrong with GCSEs GNVQs or Btecs
            nothing wrong with SATs
            nothing wrong with Assessment for Learning
            nothing wrong even with Academies

            it’s just that they all of them
            haven’t been done properly
            because Those Who Don’t Teach
            stand aside
            and see only
            the full stop

            but education is not
                the full stop
            it is not the words the syntax
                the grammar
            it is not the tense the parse
                or the propositions
            it is the communication
                it is the communication

            you don’t see by looking at your own eye lens
            you can’t bite your own teeth
            you can’t teach by plan and performance

                                          —o—

            don’t tell me to differentiate my outcomes
                I prefer to see where on the horizon
                we find ourselves
            don’t tell me to personalise my differentiation
                I prefer to hold eye-contact
            don’t tell me to act with the corporation
                I prefer to communicate
            don’t tell me to respond to OFSTED criteria
                I prefer to make the journey myself
            don’t tell me anything
                I learnt how to walk
            and I learnt how to talk
                when I was two

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

management & teaching art & teaching craft wormhole: plaintive // plaintiff? // but not precious
glass wormhole: ‘staring through the glass …’
managerialism wormhole: I didn’t see it coming
performance wormhole: manifesto
politics wormhole: militant naïveté

 

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plaintive // plaintiff? // but not precious

27 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

2012, 5*, defeat, identity, management, teaching, teaching art, teaching craft

 

 

 

                                   plaintive

                    why won’t you give me an environment
                                   that let’s me breathe
                                   and let’s me give
                                   what I will give
                    why won’t you see the whole of what I give
                                   before you
                                   scrutinise the detail
                    why won’t you listen to me
                                   because I can see the stems
                                   of what you say
                                   and you ain’t
                                   talking flowers

                                   plaintiff?

                    and why oh why do I still keep hoping
                                   that you will

                                   is it my lack and your loss
                                   or my loss and your lack

                                   but not precious

                                   either way
                                   I am crushed
                                   and you are bloated

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

identity wormhole: ‘I am the Riddler …’
management wormhole: tragedy
teaching wormhole: zagged
teaching craft wormhole: there is no / meritocracy

 

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… Mark; remember …

"... the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful; it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe to find ashes." ~ Annie Dillard

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